Drake Law Faculty Bumbles Writing Exams, Will Students Suffer?

[ISUCKATTHIS]

You may certainly mock it.  What's a kitty bomb?

[Matthies]

Drake is somewhere in Iowa.

is it ranked below me so that I may mock it?

Also this thread is geting more hits than an AA oone, I may have to kitty bomb it

Yeah, what ever happened to puppying threads?

BTW, confirm for me just how wrong this guy is, so he can move on with his day.

You are wrong about him, but his a terrior and can probaly out last you in this game.

A kitty bomb is when you kill a thread by posting lots of pictures of cute kittens in it, some folks do puppies I do kitties

[Matthies]

No you're not.

You can win this one, trust me. He’s a regular on one of those most evil vicious message boards around. Those folks there would eat me and you alive and make us cry like prepubescent girls, no joke, they are professional agitators.

Ok, I’m off to get drunk, good luck on your last final…and use HEADINGS!

[ISUCKATTHIS]

LOL.  Sure, Irrx. 

[Miss P]

"Fair enough.  If you ever try to explain how I'm off base, I'll be happy to reconsider my positions or admit fault where appropriate."

I don't have standing for this, lol.    

Frankly, I think we've reached an impasse.  Why don't we both simply acknowledge what it is we're disagreeing about and move on? 

I think that the error made in the Drake student's case was one that could have affected students performance. I think on that basis alone, some action should be taken to correct the exam.  As far as I understand, you disagree with the idea that the administrative error could have affected performance.  Then, you think no action should be taken because, in your view, any action would be worse than the effect of the original mistake.

Why don't we just leave it there and agree to disagree? 

(as I, incidentally, tried to do about 4 pages ago)

Yes, I can see that you've done a great job of letting things go too.

As it happens, I already agreed with you that the error made in the Drake student's case was one that could have affected a student's performance on the basis that it did, indeed, apparently affect this student's performance.  This is not where we disagree.  We disagree about whether it is reasonable for it to have affected this student's performance as much as it reportedly did and about whether there is an appropriate remedy after the fact.  Given that all of your proposed solutions other than the separate curve impose knowable, and in some cases quantifiable, hardships on a larger number of students, they are not appropriate remedies.  If the exam was unfair for this one student or for all of the students who took the test early, it's no improvement to make it unfair to others as well.  I think this is especially the case given that this student could have avoided hardship by looking through the exam before writing.

From my perspective, the fact that LS grading is so subjective makes it even more important for the administrative playing field to be totally level.  Form and style matter, even if the official line is that they’re not supposed to.  Then, the state of mind of the exam taker matters (confidence, nervousness, whether or not he/she is rushing) even more than it would on a more objective test.  In my mind, that’s all the more reason to make sure that no student faces any extra burdens during the test administration than does any other.

No one here disagrees that it is important for the playing field to be level.  We are merely discussing what, if anything, can and should be done when it is not.

[ISUCKATTHIS]

"No one here disagrees that it is important for the playing field to be level.  We are merely discussing what, if anything, can and should be done when it is not."

Exactly.  And based on reams and reams of discussion, I think there are substantially different views on that subject.  I also think that we're not going to reach a consensus.  I am content with that.

As an aside, it's kind of hilarious that Irrx engages in pages upon pages of discussion, sleeps on it, gets embarrassed about it and then deletes it all the next day.  What a little weenie.  Not that he shouldn't have been embarrassed...

[Miss P]

"No one here disagrees that it is important for the playing field to be level.  We are merely discussing what, if anything, can and should be done when it is not."

Exactly.  And based on reams and reams of discussion, I think there are substantially different views on that subject.  I also think that we're not going to reach a consensus.  I am content with that.

Cool.  I was just pointing out (1) that you had misconstrued my position in your post that purported to outline our differences; (2) that this particular point about the importance of maintaining a level playing field didn't do a lot to advance the discussion (except that it perhaps implies that the people who disagree with you about the poorly copied exam disagree with you about this -- which is false); and (3) that you never actually engaged in a discussion about the fundamental disagreement in this thread beyond saying, summarily, that your admittedly unfair solutions were better than doing nothing.

As an aside, it's kind of hilarious that Irrx engages in pages upon pages of discussion, sleeps on it, gets embarrassed about it and then deletes it all the next day.  What a little weenie.  Not that he shouldn't have been embarrassed...

Don't take this as a mark of pride.  IrrX deletes all of his posts, and it doesn't have anything to do with you.  (I personally don't understand d-dubbing -- obviously -- but a lot of posters do it.)

[ISUCKATTHIS]

Oh believe me, I don't take it as a mark of pride.  I have the same feeling one would get after beating a beating a 4th grader at a geography quiz.  Winning is still embarrassing, even if losing would be more so.

[Miss P]

While you're here, can I ask --

You understood exactly what I was saying about your "standing" to tell me I was too tightly wound, right?  I noticed you made some kind of remark about it somewhere in the last few pages, but I wanted to make sure.

[ISUCKATTHIS]

You're a scab-picker, eh? 


In short:  I wasn't ever truly offended by anything you wrote, I'm quite sure I didn't really understand but now I really really do not want to go back there.

To be honest, I did not read your remark about standing to mean that I would not have standing to bring a law suit against you for being tightly wound.  I read your use of "standing" as the plain and ordinary meaning not the legal one.  That's how I read it, maybe not how you meant it. 

I find the whole thing very confusing and I do not want to revisit it for no better reason than to avoid the firestorm of incredibly personal and inane discussion that followed.